ESPT Barcelona Main Event – Ruzzi Takes Title

The Main Event of the local partnering Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event Barcelona brought a record breaking field of 2,560 players creating a prize pool of €2,483,200. After four days of action that field was reduced to just the one player left standing in Matias Ruzzi who claimed the title and a payout of €198,550.

What makes this achievement all the better is the fact that this was the first Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event he had ever played and he actually started the final day with the second smallest chip stack. This is not to mean that he has not played other big events before however as he has recorded a cash in 16th place at the EPT Grand Final earlier this year.

He overcame Vladislav Donchev heads up to secure the title not too long after the remaining four had agreed to a chop of the remaining prize pool. This meant that despite not winning the event, the runner up still took home the largest payout due to the fact that he had a good chip lead when the chop was made.

Day 3 began with nine players and did not take too long to see that field reduced down in all honesty. The chop was a big reason for that when there were just four players remaining.The top 833 players in the event went home with a payout but of course the big money was to be found on the final table where the minimum a player would go home with was €40,849.

Arguably the biggest name on the final table was that of Andrew Chen, a player that has made three European Poker Tour final tables throughout his career. This was another final table for him but he could only manage a 6th place finish for a score of €73,826. We expect that he will head over to the EPT Main Event for Day 1b today.

This event has been claimed to be the largest live freeze out tournament of its kind and just shows the growing popularity of poker not just in Spain but the whole of Europe. This event dwarfed last year’s numbers and the same is expected for all of the European Poker Tour events still to be played out.

The Argentinean will now no doubt go and celebrate his success but he might already have one eye on entering the EPT Main Event with Day 1b kicking off today.